I collect little things all year, clipping from websites in my Evernote, saving or favoriting posts in my rss feedreader. These are things I don’t want to forget, but I do, until when things seem to slow down at the end of the year, I clean out all my files. I ‘liked’ the Boing Boing post “Library of Congress releases 11,700 freely usable photos of “roadside America,” taken by John Margolies” back in September, because I love the type of old road-side attractions that used to make up the bulk of Florida’s tourist activities back in the day. Of course, Florida doesn’t have a monopoly on these and John Margolies photograph collection at the Library of Congress beautifully captures a whole country’s worth of strange and lovely (gallery).

I do not usually read the newspaper anymore; nor do I watch mainstream news programming. I have a vague feeling that one of the original reasons for me turning away from traditional news media was the constant focus on lurid sensationalism, fear mongering, and general bad news. Yet, I have been spending plenty of time in the Chronicling America project. Do news papers now-a-days have articles on holiday customs around the world? Do they have suggestions for your next Halloween party, and serialized stories about plucky youngsters in a fairyland adventure? ‘Cause that might get me back to reading newspapers.

Anyway, La Befana is the Christmas witch of Italy (wikipedia). This article from the Midland Journal is just one variation of her legend. Like an old fashioned Santa Claus, she doles out presents and punishment as appropriate.